This essay examines the ideology or value system implicit in Joanne Rowling's Harry Potter series. Many of the images in the series, despite being fantastic or empirically unprecedented, are minor transformations of popular books and of our very common physical and cultural reality. However, these imaginative transformations of mundane reality actually imitate, reiterate, and conserve common and contemporary secular values. On a third level the thesis will show that this conservation of contemporary secular values is undermined by a cynical and very subtle transformative element of satire, parody, and criticism. Depending on the theme explored by the particular chapter, a different level of meaning might be evident. Chapter One discusses Rowling's parody of popular secular values. Chapter Two focuses on her parody of Christianity. Chapter Three focuses on Rowling's representations of nature and technology and on her parodic reversal of their traditional representation in similar literature. Chapter Four discusses how Rowling has made a critical appropriation of popular culture's reliance on thoughtless and 'instant' solutions, and discusses how she has made a mockery of her own hero, Harry Potter. The conclusion discusses the value of literary devices that transform literal meanings and verbal images into new meanings and images, and concludes that Harry Potter should be read cautiously. A second conclusion is that the author's claim the series is incomplete is a hoax. This argument is defended with a demonstration that the existing four Harry Potter books form a complete unit, and with a reminder that an element of hoax pervades Rowling's entire series.

Many Chinese car companies have attempted to invest in and purchase famous Swedish companies, which attracted a lot of attention of the media, particularly in Sweden and America. The investment is a complex transaction when companies from two countries are involved and are much different. This difference is the starting point for this study. This thesis aims to analyze the image of China in Swedish and American media. The study suggests that the representation of China in three newspapers is deeply rooted in ideology. Theories on media representation are applied and used in a qualitative analysis in order to present how the image of China is constructed. Through analyzing the twenty-five selected samples to explore how the media understood the Saab event and how they understood Chinese financial power. The main theoretical concept of the thesis is ideology, which is used to analyze the potential meanings of the Swedish and American notions of China. The findings show that both positive and negative images of China were portrayed by Swedish and American media. Furthermore, Chinese political leaders played an important role in the economic activity were also a central theme.

The aim of this thesis is, within two films Wall Street and Wall Street. Money Never Sleeps, to explore characters from different levels of capitalism’s characteristics and ideological positions, what kind of society and ideological patterns the two films reflect and in which ways do the films promote and/or criticize capitalism. Theories on ideology and ideology critique are applied and used in a discourse analysis in order to compare characters of different levels of capitalism’s ideologies and characteristics over times in the films and describe what kind of society and ideological patterns the two films reflect. The outcomes show that characters’ ideologies and characteristics actually change over times in the films. And the outcomes also show that the two films generally promote capitalism by creating same model of story under different societies and ideological patterns.

This paper deploy the logit approach model and collect annual data from 1974 to 2004 in 22 OECD countries. It can examine that the option of exchange rate regime may cause the replacements of the governor of central banks during his tenure of office. According to prior empirical studies shows that the rightist parties favor low inflation, they may choose fixed exchange rate regime for holding monetary stability; otherwise, the leftist parties prefer low unemployment and high production, they may adopt the flexible exchange rate regime to maintain independent monetary policy and to achieve their macroeconomic objectives. Due to diverse political preferences, Does the choice of exchange rate regime disobeyed the political ideology of ruling party will cause that the central bank governors lose their job? Our results manifest that these chairmen of central banks can independently insist and defend their exchange rate regimes in OECD countries.

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Since 1993, the Taiwanese society has reached the WHO standard of an aging society in which over 7% of the whole population are older than 65. This research aims to find out the images of older people, those cultural and societal factors involved in the representations of older people, and what roles the media plays to connect the related signs? This research takes perspectives from the critical theories and applies the methodology of semiotics to analysis of Changchun and Kangjiang magazines in Taiwan. The researcher collects 85 different ads containing images of older people and uses the viewpoints of mythology to analyze in semiotic terms in order to make known the cultural myths and ideologies hidden in those images and signs. The result shows, images of older people in the ads are deeply influenced by culture, regarding older people as inevitable declining because of aging. However, owing to modernization of Taiwan and more contact with the western culture, the images of older people in magazine ads start to incorporate new concepts. Fore example, active and energetic ¡§successful¡¨ older people have gradually become the new paradigm. This course of development is similar to that in the American society discussed in the reviewed literature. This change in images is related to the trend that the baby boomers that hold most political and economic resources are starting to retire. In the context of Chinese culture, older people represented in those ads are rarely without their families and values of an idealized family are highly embellished. Although the realities have greatly changed, the traditional image of ¡§three generations in a family¡¨ is constructed as the ideal form of the happy family. Older people are suggested by ads to have the utmost happiness and gratification. In these ads, commodities are presented as the resolution of problems. Conventionally, advertisement ¡§creates¡¨ an anxiety out of short comparison with the ¡§ideal¡¨ and then introduces products as the panacea to cure all the problems. Health-related ads make good use of the existing Chinese medicine belief in pureness and harmlessness of nature and the concept of effectiveness and efficiency of new technology to grant the bio-tech products a combination of benevolence and familiarity of nature and preciseness and effectiveness of technology. By doing so, the ads smooth over the possible conflicts between nature and technology and make up a collage of associated myths. The dominant ideology in ads about older people is the binary extremes of being young or old. By means of emphasizing older people as ugly, unable and powerless, the ideology promotes the values of being young. Advertisements set some high standards for older people to catch up with and assimilate those who are deemed as ¡§insufficient.¡¨ Mythology arbitrarily selects conventional concepts and popular myths to make up seemingly reasonable explanations, successfully transforms the public issues about older people to insufficient anxieties to be coped with by individual efforts, and implies that products are the only resort to ease the anxieties, cleverly de-politicizing the societal awareness of well-being about older people. In a paternal social system, the dominant mainstream ideology tends to separate the dominant and subordinate sides into two contradictory extremes and then establish a few roles models in accord with social expectations to stabilize the structure of the social system. Discriminating levels such as race, sex, class and age are practiced in similar ways. Besides, these discriminating categories will add up and interplay due to the overlapping of a person¡¦s multiple positions and intensity inequality. For instance, in this research the standards and roles for older people, apart form being taken care of in the family, a new kind of images for older people is burgeoning. The new images of Caucasian older people, energetic expressions and lifestyles are modeled as the new paradigm for the elderly. In addition, collaborating with sex discrimination, this study shows, the standards for older males are different form those for older females. The new research domain is worth our further trying to exam the different standards for the male and female elderly from a perspective of sex.

Almost all the sources on modernism originate material transformations in Western world to industrial revolution while mental ones to enlightenment. In all these narrations, technology, engineering, and modernism are considered as correlated. Besides these concepts, the everyday life rituals that were naturally constructed in the historical process also strengthen this attitude. Then, what are the meanings of the same concepts in a country that experience a reverse process instead of the modernization through industrialization? How new technologies had adapted to local circumstances of an unindustrialized country? While having these questions in mind, this study intends to identify the role of engineer and to reflect on the importance of technology on Turkish modernization project, hence, this dissertation is an historical inquiry into the role played by new building technologies and civil engineering. It covers a broad period extending from late Ottoman to 1960. Among many prestigious building types of engineering such as silos, dams, harbors, factories, railroad etc. that also became popular representations of development, prosperity and modernity, the bridges have been focused on with a particular emphasis because of both their importance for engineering and construction of transportation networks.

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According to past researches, we find that journalists often make close relationship with news resources in order to accomplish their jobs. Exports sum up three models that include opposition, cooperation, and assimilation. At the same time, other related researches indicate that the more lasting journalists have the same news lines, the easier journalists have the assimilative relationship with news resources. Both of journalists and news resources have the cooperative and dependent relationship, so it becomes an important issue to research the relationship between journalists and news resources. The research discusses with the interactive relationship between the local councils and journalists in order to realize how reporters select to close news resources, and both of journalists and news resources have the assimilative relationship with the long period interaction. At the same time, the research discusses with the selective and close influence of ¡§professional consciousness¡¨ of journalists in order to understand about the interactive types between Taiwan¡¦s journalists and local councilors. The main points in the research are as followed: The research finds that the male journalists are more than female journalists. Males are two- third, and females are one -third. But female journalists are generally more than male journalists in Taipei City Council, and journalists who have the news line in other local councils are elder, it¡¦s different from the type of reporters in the central council. In the activeness of journalists, the research finds the situation with the questionnaires and deep interview that the activeness of journalists is higher than councilors. But there are half councilors are one-third journalists who consider that it depends on different kinds of news. Thus, the interaction between journalists and councilors will change with different kind of news. More of councilors and journalists who take the deep interview consider that the good interaction between journalists and councilors is a kind of dependently cooperative relationship. After having the deep interaction each other, some journalists and news resources become the assimilative relationship. It¡¦s obvious that the relationship change between journalists and councilors comes from the three models---opposition, cooperation, and assimilation. Journalists will pay much attention to the first point ¡§how much I can trust¡¨, the second point is ¡§ to judge with their past experiences¡¨ when they the interview with councilors. It¡¦s obvious that the two points in closing news resources are very important, and those improves that the ¡§correction¡¨ in reports is attached importance to reporters very much.